How to Use our Subscription Products
This How to Use page provides information on the features, content, and functionality within the Bloomsbury Fashion Central subscription products.
Search
The search box is located in the top left of the website.
This defaults to search the subscription relevant to you but you can also opt to search within products outside your subscription by clicking on the down arrow next to the search box and ticking the box next to the product(s) of interest.
If you search your own subscription product only, related content from other products will appear on the right hand side of your search results, underneath ‘More results from Bloomsbury Fashion Central’. You can choose to hide this if you wish; just click ‘Hide the column’.
Image search results will show in a pane above text-based search results, if you have access to a subscription product that features images.
Text search results indicate the type of content on the right-hand side, eg ‘Book chapter’, ‘Encyclopedia entry’. Colour coding indicates which product the content belongs to – green indicates Berg Fashion Library and red indicates Fairchild Books Library
Hit-highlighting within the search results shows the appearance of your search term in the content.
The default number of search results is 10 items – you can change this to 20 or 25.
You can sort search results by title, author, or date.
Advanced Search
To access advanced search, click on ‘Advanced search’ to the right of the main search box. You can use this to do more complex searches.
You can use Boolean operators here, ie AND, OR. Enter a term in the search box, then click ‘Add row’ and select ‘AND’, ‘OR’, or ‘NOT’; then enter the second term. For example, entering ‘African’ AND ‘dress’ will return only content related to African dress, whereas entering ‘African’ OR ‘dress’ will return content related to African and content related to dress.
You can also restrict your search to specific areas of the site; for example, if you want to find a book with beads in the title, enter ‘beads’ and select ‘Book title’ from the dropdown.
You can also restrict your search to a specific time period of publication by entering dates into ‘Publication dates’ or ‘Online publication dates’.
Browse
Another way to discover content is via ‘Browse’, which is available in the main navigation above ‘Search’. Hover over ‘Browse’ and select one of the eight terms displayed.
This takes you to a page showing more detailed terms within the top level term; for example, the Place page features various geographical locations. In some cases the display cannot accommodate the full list of terms – simply click ‘More’ to reveal these.
Selecting a term on one of these pages will show you all the content that has been indexed under that term. You can select second level terms, eg Place > Europe, or third level terms, eg Place > Europe > France.
Clicking on a term will take you to a search results page, showing results for that term and showing a filter corresponding to that term.
Related Content
Related content is another useful way to explore content.
On many content pages, whether images or text-based content, you will see related content at the foot of the page.
This may include content from your current subscription product as well as other subscription products. This depends on the subject matter and how the item has been indexed.
If your subscription product features image content, you will see related images as well as related text-based content.
Image pages feature the index terms for that image under the ‘Explore’ heading on the left-hand side of the image. These are clickable, and will return search results based on that index term (this behaves in the same way as browse, so clicking on the same term in browse gives the same results).
Timeline
The timeline enables you to explore fashion over time. To access this, hover over ‘Timeline’ in the main navigation and click on the timeline(s) available to you (depending on your subscription).
Click on the date range of interest to you to view images from that period or use the forward and back arrows to navigate through time periods.
Clicking on an image will enlarge it and provide some basic information – click again to go to the dedicated page for that image to find out more and view a larger image. (Note that a few images just exist in the timeline and do not have equivalent image pages, but most do click through to an image page.)
Saving and Folders
To enable saving and to access your folders of saved content, you must create an individual account via ‘Sign up’. Once you’ve created an account, you will need to sign in if you wish to save or access your folders.
The ‘Sign up’ and ‘Sign in’ links can be found on the top right of all BFC pages.
You can save each type of text-based content*, eg books, encyclopedias, as well as images (if your subscription includes these).
Look for the ‘Save’ icon at the top of the page of the content you wish to save.
Clicking on ‘Save’ will enable you to save the URL of the relevant page into a folder. You can create multiple folders if you wish and give them specific names.
You can access folders from your homepage (see ‘MY FOLDERS’ at the bottom of the page) or from ‘My Content’ in the main navigation above search.
* Fairchild Books Library: It is not yet possible to save STUDIO content.
** Berg Fashion Library: It is not yet possible to save images from Berg Encyclopedia of World Fashion.
Cite
You can cite each type of text-based content, eg books, encyclopedias, as well as images (if your subscription includes these).
Look for the ‘Cite’ icon at the top of the page of the content you wish to cite.
Clicking on ‘Cite’ will show three formats: MLA, Chicago and APA – simply copy the one which you require and paste this into your document.
* Berg Fashion Library: It is not yet possible to cite images from Berg Encyclopedia of World Fashion.
Social Sharing
You can share each type of content* (including images where appropriate to your subscription) via various social media and email.
Look for the ‘Share’ icon at the top of the page of the content you wish to share. Click this and select the method you wish to use to share the content.
* Fairchild Books Library: It is not yet possible to share STUDIO content.
Your Homepage
Your homepage is tailored to you and your subscription.
Clicking on carousel items takes you to specific pages within the product and you can also click on the following links (depending on your subscription) to see the full detail of content contained in your subscription.
Berg Fashion Library – https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/products/berg-fashion-library/whats-in-the-berg-fashion-library
Fairchild Books Library – https://www.bloomsburyfashioncentral.com/products/fairchild-books-library/whats-in-fairchild-books-library
This is a quick way to access a specific piece of content you are interested in.
If you sign into your own personal account within your subscription, you will see ‘MY FOLDERS’ at the bottom of the homepage. These folders store any content you have saved. Please see ‘Saving and Folders’ above for more information on saving content.